If you don't feel like waiting till next month for the official RTM version of the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 RTM then there is a workaround you can use for now. The official RTM version of the tools isn't due out till next month because this is the official launch time frame of Windows Server 2012 as well. If you try to install the Release Preview version of RSAT you are greeted with an error.

Many home users have already found out how great NOD32 is for your PC's protection against viruses and trojans. The NOD32 client is very lightweight, uses very little system resources with a low CPU overhead, while keeping your machines protected on all levels. Businesses can leverage the power of ESET Nod32 in the ESET Nod32 Antivirus Business Edition for both servers and workstations. This article outlines some of the steps to get you up and running at your business.

SQL Server 2012 is now generally available from Microsoft. Previously we covered the forthcoming SQL Server 2012 and its requirements. SQL Server 2012 delivers with new capabilities for mission-critical workloads, business intelligence and hybrid IT across datacenters and public and private clouds as well.

Some of the features include:

The latest version of SQL Server 2012 can be downloaded here. Microsoft also has a listing of all things related to SQL Server 2012 in their Virtual Launch Event. Content from this event is going to be available until June 30th, 2012.

Also Microsoft is announcing their second Preview of the Hadoop based service for Azure. They have expanded the capacity of this service by 4x to accommodate high demand. The preview provides "an elastic Hadoop Service" with more reliability through disaster recovery of the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) NameNode and advanced analytics via Hadoop projects such as Mahout. It also is providing insights through tools like Office and Sharepoint.

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Microsoft at its Convergence conference for Dynamics ERP and CRM customers and partners, has shown off early concepts of what some of these business apps may look like in a Metro-UI. They are the only company demonstrating Metro based business apps.

Some of the apps include a Windows 8 HTML5 metro-style (WinRT) client that connects to Dynamics ERP and CRM back-ends. The image below is an example of the Dynamics Start page in Metro. Each screen can be personalized by end users.

As far as servers go, you don't think much of them. They generally just sit in the background and do what they are supposed to. One usually doesn't think of flashy GUI interfaces when it comes to servers either. They generally are fairly straight forward and basic and in the case of Windows, haven't change a whole lot in the past several years, until now with Windows Server 8 and its Metro interface, which most likely will be largely ignored however, at least initially.

The Metro Tile interface has replaced the Start Button and Menu, just like in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Microsoft is calling it the Metro-style interface. There are tiles present that manage the functionality of the server. You can even add more admin tiles by enabling them and subsequently you have the usual tools you are used to.

There is not a definite release date for Server 8, but a likely time frame will be just around or after the release of Windows 8 later this year. Windows Server 8 only comes in x64. Its the first server to only to support x64 systems from release date.

Windows Server 8 beta is available from this link and was released to the public on March 1st, 2012 (one day after Windows 8 Consumer Preview). Its available as a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) or ISO. The VHD is meant for at least Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 (Hyper-V). See our YouTube video below for a quick run down on the setup and features.

There is finally an official Microsoft branded app for connecting to your companies Microsoft Lync communications server on iOS. A week after a bunch of other Microsoft apps arrived for iOS and Android, Microsoft has released versions of the Lync 2010 client on iPhone and iPad. You can find the iOS app here. Previously if you wanted to connect to a Microsoft Communicator or Microsoft Lync server, you would have to use a third party app like iDialog, which was pretty good as well.

Both versions are free, just as they are for Windows Phone and Android. The Lync app requires a corporate connection to Lync 2010 Server or Lync Online. Lync Online is part of Office 365.

I personally think this is a great move by Microsoft, a giant software company, extending its line of applications onto other platforms. Hopefully this will be a continuing trend and prove beneficial to Microsoft.

You can download release candidate 0 (RC0) from MSDN or Microsoft. The download link ishere.

There are many new features with SQL Server 2012 as we previously covered such as AlwaysOn, better performance management, more reporting and visualization tools, Columnstore index, and FileTables. The product will come in 3 main editions: Standard, Business Intelligence and Enterprise.

With this release, Microsoft considers it "production" ready and provides several migration tools: Upgrade Advisor, Distributed Replay and SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA). This release includes features and fixes requested by some of the many users who have tested previous builds.

Some of the major enhancements Microsoft is showcasing with SQL Server 2012 include these:

Greater availability. Deliver the required 9s and data protection with AlwaysOn, delivering added functionality over CTP3 that allows customers to experience multiple, readable secondaries for distributed scale of reporting and backup workloads and support for FileTable and FILESTREAM which brings first-class HA to complex data types.

Rapid data exploration. Empower end users with new insights through rapid data exploration and visualization. Discover new insights at the speed of thought with more feature/functionality in Power View, the highly interactive, familiar browser-based data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience for end users.

Credible, consistent data. In addition to CTP3 functionality delivered for Data Quality Services and Master Data Services, customers can better support heterogeneous data within Data Warehouses through new Change Data Capture (CDC) support for Oracle.

Optimized productivity. Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with the new SQL Server Data Tools, a unified development experience for database and business intelligence projects, and cloud-ready capabilities within SQL Server Management Studio for snapshot backups to the Windows Azure Platform. Additionally, SQL Server 2012 offers a new version of Express – LocalDB. SQL Express LocalDB is a lightweight version of Express with all its programmability features, yet runs in user mode with a fast, zero-configuration installation and short list of prerequisites.

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